The city is set to release it official RFP next week that will shed some more light on the bid to build a new engineering campus in New York. While a winner hasn’t been selected yet, Betabeat has heard that Stanford, who has been playing public footsy with the mayor for some time, is one of the frontrunners. The other two top contenders are Cornell and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology.
In order to attract top students from hotbeds like Indian and China, the city knows it needs a great brand. That is why it is reaching out to other universities instead of just growing the indigenous programs. In this respect it is hard to top Stanford, but there are some interesting advantages for in-state rival Cornell.

Building a new campus a multi-year process. But so is earning accreditation in New York state, a requirement for handing out those snazzy Stanford diplomas. Cornell is already approved and can bypass that three to five year process. The Ithaca native also has significant real estate holdings already in place, including the new $630 million WCMC extension at the Weill Medical College.

It’s less clear what separates Technion from the pack, but Silicon Alley has had close ties with the Israeli tech scene since the dot-com days.

Perhaps by the time this project is finished, the best brains in the tech scene will still see the value in a formal degree and not opt for education by accelerator instead.

Comments

Wow, you talk about trying to attract students from India and China? Put it in Flushing! That place is like China central! This organization called Coalition for Queens has been trying to gain public support for a campus in Flushing. Really nice place too, right next to the river and citifield.

It should be Cornell:
-Stanford has zero experience managing a satellite campus. Cornell has excelled at satellite campuses both domestic and international.
-Even the best video conference equipment in the world would fail to give Stanford-NYC the feeling of a unified entity with Stanford. Cornell however would build this campus a short walk from its medical campus and runs daily charter bus service from Ithaca to NYC- allowing for the round trip to easily be made in a single work day (linking faculty, graduate students and administration easily and effectively between the larger Cornell campus and NYC)
-Cornell’s culture is more aligned with NYC. Stanford’s is not.
-Cornell is the land-grant college of NYS and has long served both the educational and economic priorities of the state. Stanford has no loyalties to New York State.
-Stanford is Cornell’s step-child: it was founded by Cornell alumni and faculty who wanted to copy the Cornell model onto the West Coast.

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